An Episcopal (Anglican) Chaplain in the Saint Luke's Health System of Kansas City, reflecting on work and faith and life. NOTA BENE: my opinions are my own and do not represent the Episcopal Church or the Saint Luke's Health System.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

I've Been Tagged! A Book Meme

Jason over at Gower Street has tagged me. What fun! This is the first time anyone has tagged me!

So, here's how it works:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.

2. Find page 123.

3. Find the first five sentences.

4. Post the next three sentences.

I first read this at the office, but declined to play there. The nearest book was the Journal of the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, and I wouldn't want to impose that on anyone, whatever might be on page 123. But now I'm home. So.

Let's see: the nearest book of 123 pages or more. It's The Dynamics of Grief by David K. Switzer.

So, now to page 123: it's in chapter 5, "Guilt, Hostility, and Grief;" and in a section on Paul Tillich.

When the person becomes aware of the ambiguity of his own actions, it is subjectively experienced as guilt, and it is present every moment. The realization of one's own acts towards self-negation drives one toward self-rejection, "the despair of having lost our destiny." This guilt is one of the three major forms of anxiety in which nonbeing threatens being, by threatening man's moral self-affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt and absolutely in terms of condemnation."

(The included quote, by the way, is from Tillich's The Courage to Be.)

I was interested to see what would be "closest." Almost the same distance were Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer and Bishop Moorman's A History of the Church in England. This is not evidence of the quality of my personal library as it is of the messiness of it.

Now, who should I share this with? Who would have the appropriate love of books?

How about Susan, Derek, and the Feminarian, whom I do try to check in on periodically? I hope they find it interesting.